March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Halliburton Co., the world’s largest
provider of hydraulic-fracturing services, boosted savings from
the use of recycled water in the drilling technique to as much
as $400,000 a well last year.

Halliburton changed the chemistry of the water, chemical
and sand combination blasted underground to free trapped
hydrocarbons, increasing savings from about $6,000 a well in
2011 to as much as $400,000 in 2012 for some wells in North
Dakota’s Bakken field, said Walter Dale, head of water
management for the Houston-based company.

“It is a paradigm shift for the industry,” Dale said
today in an interview at IHS CERAWeek in Houston.

Bakken wells cost an average $10 million to drill and
complete in the fourth quarter, Hess Corp., which holds 800,000
acres in the region, said in a slide presentation March 4. As
local and federal regulators raise questions about water
consumption from drilling operations, U.S. oil and natural gas
producers are asking service companies to improve their handling
of the millions of gallons of fluids involved in fracking an
average well.

Halliburton’s goal is for the entire oil and gas industry
to use an average of 25 percent less fresh water in fracking
jobs by the end of next year, Dale said.